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transform schooling as we know it, to help all students realise their
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Wednesday, March 28, 2018

We are at the beginning of a new educational era. The challenge now is to reimagine the school day to ensure all students’ gifts and talents are identified, amplified and valued.

In the
latest Principals’ magazine the National
President of the NZ Principal FederationWhetu

Whetu Cormack

Cormack writes that we are at the ‘start of a new educational era’. ‘Standardisation has gone along with the competition it engendered, the
narrowed curriculum, the obsession with data, and the endless comparison.’

Business
‘guru’ Steven Covey’s advice,
writing about habits of effective leadership, was to ‘begin with end in mind’. What do we want our schools to achieve
for their students? What do we need to change to ensure the unique range of
gifts and talents of our students?

andnumeracy intensification.In the 70s New Zealand was a world leader in
literacy – now, it seems, we are 32nd! Tomorrow’sSchools (1986), Flockton
reflects was implemented by the then Labour Prime Minister David Lange on the
grounds ‘good people poor system’.

Lester
write that 30 years later we have wasted excessive amounts of time and
resources replacing approaches of the past that weren’t broken and didn’t need
fixing. It time, says Lester ‘to put the
shine back on teaching’ to create a nurturing environment for both teachers and
students. ‘For too long our system has suffered from those who mistakenly think
they know better’.

reach their full height as artist, as craftsmen, as scientists,
and as students, through the establishment of a community based on mutual
self-respect'.

The last
three decades have compromised the unique child centred approach that was
highly respected world-wide up until the introduction of Tomorrows Schools
followed by technocratic curriculum and National Standards and the associated
assessment requirements.

If schools were to focus on developing their
classrooms as communities of learning based on developing the gifts and talents
of all students what would need to change?

A brief
visit to most classrooms will illustrate that literacy and numeracy rule
supreme. As one commentator has written ‘the evil twins of literacy and
numeracy have gobbled up the entire day’. The shape of the daily programme
provides a message of what is seen to be important and this is reinforced by
the narrow scope of achievement data collected.

I

John Holt

n the 1970s progressive educator John Holt wrote,‘school must become communities in
which children learn, not by being preached at, but by living and doing, to
become aware of the needs of other people.’ There is a need to make schools, 'a
place in which a child has so much respect for his own work that he will
respect the work of others and will be naturally concerned to make the school a
place where everyone can do best at whatever kind of work he wants to do.’

John Holt was once asked a question. 'If schools were to take one giant
step forward this year towards a better tomorrow, what would it be? 'Holt replied, 'it would be to let
every child be the planner, director and assessor of his own education, to
allow and encourage him, with the inspiration and guidance of more experienced
and expert people, an as much help as he asked for, to decide what he is to
learn, when he is to learn it, and how well he is learning. It would make our
schools....a resource for free and independent learning’.

Guy Claxton

The
writings of Sir Ken, Guy Claxton,Elwyn Richardson, John Holt and many
others ask for a transformation of our classrooms.

There are those who believe
that this might be beyond the capabilities of teachers whose only experience is
post Tomorrow’s Schools (1986) but,
in contrast, there are others who believe that many teachers are teachers are
looking for a ‘new direction’, one that really values their professional
involvement.

Jerome Bruner, another resected educationalist, wrote many
years ago that ‘teaching is the canny art
of intellectual temptation’ bringing up the question how can we ‘tempt’ our
students so that they can realise the ideas expressed by John Holt. This would
be an ideal topic for a school Teacher Only Day.

Transferring this ideal of a community of
learners to the daily programme is the challenge.

Such organisations still form the basis of many
junior classrooms and align well with modern ‘play based’ programmes.

Developmental
education forms the basis of Kelvin
Smythe’s writings. Kelvin is an ex Senior Inspector of Schools and shares
his ideas through his Netkonnect Website.Kelvin sees learning as a holistic or integrated experience and has
dedicated much of his efforts sharing the ideas of Elwyn Richardson, Sylvia
Ashton Warner and creative teachers he has worked with. He believes that it
is the sharing of the

It’s
obvious that developing a classroom as a community of learners along
developmental /holistic lines is difficult to define as it depends on a number
of factors, the teacher’s confidence in various learning areas, the independent
learning skills of the students and, most importantly the leadership of the
school. Programmes will necessarily be evolutionary and it is good advice to proceed
slowly – as Steven Covey says to ‘keep the end in mind’.

Some good advice about class programmes

Creative
class management is the art, or craft, of creating the conditions that provide
students with enough security and structure for them to take the learning risks
required to develop personalised learning. Too much chaos leads to disorder -
too much structure reduces the learner’s ability to

Class management

make decisions and choices.
Most current classroom management procedures are determined by unquestioned
routines and habits that reflect a past age.

'If there is any other situations fraught with
danger for mental health as that of a class held rigid by fear, it is a class
exposed to the anxieties engendered by unlimited freedom. There is nothing as
terrifying to the immature human being as a completely unstructured situation.
Without a recognisable structure they feel the teacher has abandoned them - and
so he has- to their own impulses, all of which are by no means always
constructive.' B Morris

'I would caution student teachers to always be
flexible with kids, but not to leave them with no structure, because many times
we are the only structure these kids have.'Kouzes
and Postner

'It is significant to realise that the most
creative environments in our society are not the ever-changing ones. The
artist's studio, the researcher's laboratory, the scholar's library are each
kept deliberately simple so as to support the complexities of the work in
progress. They are deliberately

kept predictable so the unpredictable can
happen.'Lucy Calkins

'Without containment, spontaneity, exhalation
and freedom of the mind could seep into license and anarchy, where all day has
no shape. A benign routine helps our child to gain responsibility and our
school to stability.'
Sylvia Ashton Warner

'The word
'freedom' can never be uttered unless accompanied hand in hand with the word
responsibility. It is kinder to keep the lid on the school for a start, lifting
it little by little, simultaneously teaching responsibility, until the time
comes when the lid can be cast entirely aside and only two conditions remain -
freedom and responsibility'. Sylvia
Ashton Warner

The need to ‘reframe’ literacy and numeracy.

One easy
step to take would be integrate literacy and numeracy (renamed language arts
and

Creativity as important as literacy

mathematics?) into the current class research study. Ability grouping is
counterproductive to the development of a learning community and students need
to be helped at point of need individually or in small groups as required.Many language and maths tasks can themselves
be research based but, sounding heretical, if maths is activity based it is
better to do fewer things well.

The key role of the inquiry programme.

In a
learning community the main source of intellectual energy is provided by the
studies the class undertakes. Such studies need to cover the main strands of
the Learning Areas – many studies will integrate a number of strands from
different subject areas.

In line
with a developmental approach inquires might need to be, at first, determined
by the teachers, but as teachers confidence develops more choice and
responsibility can be passed on to the students.

The New Zealand Curriculum (2007) asks teachers to help their
students become ‘seekers, users and
creators of their own knowledge’ which is in line with the thoughts of John Holt expressed

The wider the range of
content explored the more opportunity to tap into, uncover, or amplify
students’ unique gifts and talents.

It is good
advice to do fewer things well and in depth than to cover lightly many areas
and it is also good advice to ‘slow the pace of students work’ to give you time
to come alongside them to assist then to challenge themdig deeper as needed. Much work is spoiled
because many students have internalised the idea that first finished is best.
Process is important but so then is the quality of the finished product.

John Dewey wrote about his experimental school early last century,'every child in some sense was turned into a researcher whose duty was to discover and satisfy his or her own capacities and needs and then, also to discover how this had been done.'

The need to reimagine group work.

Ability
grouping needs to be replaced with more focussed group work – each group
requiring different requirements. Four groups seem a sensible arrangement. One
group working with a teachers doing an introductory activity – perhaps a
science experiment relating to the current study; a following group writing up
their findings; a group researching using computers; and another doing a
creative activity based on the study.

Some
classes have experimented with four groups rotating through the day: language
arts group; a maths group; a group completing work for presentation; and a
group doing creative work.Group

More than literacy and numeracy

tasks
will depend on what is currently being studied.With expertise some teachers might, for brief times when independent
learning skills are in place, move into a free choice integrated day.

It is good
advice to move into experimental organisation in the last weeks of a term
giving time to assess progress over the holidays!

Teacher displays and room environments.

Part of the
tempting learners (Jerome Bruner) can be achieved by setting up a range of
displays to capture students’ curiosity. Every Learning Area provide ideas for
displays.From such displays students’
questions arise and can be added to the display. As students computer tasks these
questions (and later researched answers) can be added to the displays to inform
visitors of class

learning.

I see the a
modern school as an amalgam of an artist’s studio, a media centre, a science
laboratory, an art gallery;an
educational Te Papa with students being the researcher planning and developing
displays

John Dewey wrote early in the 20thC ‘The
only way in which adults consciously control the kind of education the immature
get is by controlling the environment in which they act and feel. We never

educate directly, but indirectly by means of the environment. Whether we permit
chance environments to do the work, or whether we design environments to the
purpose makes a great difference.’

Guy Claxton’s ‘learnacy’ and the New Zealand
Curriculum’s competencies

The New Zealand Curriculum emphasizes the need to develop in
all students the key competencies to become lifelong learners. In a class
undertaking a community of learners’ model such competencies are implicit but students’
attention needs to be drawn to them when appropriate.

Claxton’s message is that schools must change. ‘We ought not to put up with students
enduring a passive depersonalised assembly line experience’. 'We now know
enough that no student need fail if we' , as Claxton says, 'attend more successfully to cultivating the qualities of character and
mind that modern life demands; curiosity, imagination, disciplined thinking, a
love of genuine debate, scepticism. These are the learning dispositions that
students can use their whole lives’.

‘If education has lost the plot', Claxton writes,‘we need 'a
narrative for education that can engage and inspire children and their families
- a tale of trials and adventure, of learning derring-do and learning heroism.
Let's fire the kids up with the deep satisfaction of discovery and exploration.
They are born with learning zeal; let us recognise, celebrate and protect it,
but also stretch, strengthen and diversify it’

Jerry
Starratt, an expert on school leadership, has written. 'In a very real sense...human being create themselves and school can
be stage on which children work through the plot, rehearse their roles, learn
the cues, create social functions, try out their 'ideal selves' for size, play
hero parts which demonstrate their capability for greatness.' This is the
essence of personalised education

Final words to American business ‘guru’ Tom
Peters (who has holiday home in Golden Bay) from his book ‘Re-Imagine’.

'I imagine a school systemthat recognizes
learning is natural, that a love of learning is normal, and that real learning
is passionate learning. A school curriculum that values questions above
answers…creativity above fact regurgitation…individuality above conformity...
and excellence above standardized performance….. And we must reject all notions
of 'reform' that serve up more of the same: more testing, more 'standards',
more uniformity, more conformity, and more bureaucracy’.

How do you imagine the shape of education system
able to ensure all students thrive in an ever changing, uncertain but
potentially exciting future?